


The Harmony That Keeps Me Sound

by novel_concept26



Category: Pitch Perfect (2012)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:30:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novel_concept26/pseuds/novel_concept26
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was never supposed to become a lifetime-achievement sort of deal. She was never supposed to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Harmony That Keeps Me Sound

  
This was never supposed to become a lifetime-achievement sort of deal. She was never supposed to stay. It was _supposed_ to be in and out, satisfy the absent, though suspiciously invested father figure’s need for his daughter to strike a chord of normalcy before jetting off for the West Coast. It was _supposed_ to be nothing at all, a blip on the eventual radar of her musically-charged life.

And now Beca Mitchell is standing at the forefront of her senior year at Barden University, her once-shiny rape whistle tarnished from countless pushes and pulls from the pocket of her jeans, her closet lined with one too many emerald hoodies. Beca Mitchell is standing on the doorstep of graduation—honest to god _graduation_ , which means she stuck it out, which means dear old Dad got his way after all, and what even _happened_ to her?

She is a Barden Bella.

Four years running.

And still rocking the captainhood, besides.

Something about those damn Bellas _broke_ her.

***

They’ve all made it, against the usual odds of university. Beca’s not sure she would have bet on that back in freshman year, when Stacie always seemed one frat party away from pregnancy and Cynthia Rose’s gambling problem left them all doubting her ability to requisition student loans properly. Even Fat Amy wasn’t a sure bet; if Beca had been in her shoes, she would have been struck with such a fierce homesickness for her own continent that she probably wouldn’t have made it through that first year.

(A move to the West Coast is one thing, but leaving America behind entirely? No, thank you.)

She didn’t expect it, but it’s true: Stacie is still childless, Cynthia Rose is still pushing her dark secret continually out of her own way, Lilly is still not in jail. Even the girls she sort of expect to drop out and whistle their way back into a simple, a capella-less existence—Jessica and Denise—have stuck around. They were a team freshman year, but by now, she has to admit, they’re kind of a _family_. The kind of family, granted, you shuffle away from discussing in mixed company, but still. Family is family.

You don’t need to be blood to love your batch of crazies.

She hasn’t stopped marveling at this in four years.

***

She shows up to senior year in a big yellow taxi—a running tradition by now, much to good old Dad’s chagrin—because she loves how it feels to recline in the backseat of a vehicle she’ll never see again and just wait for the year to wash over her. And, she thinks with a crinkle of a smile at her lips, because she loves watching her father bumble and sigh with frustration. Four years doesn’t change everything.

Her scholarship—that is, the Being The Daughter Of A Treasured Faculty Member award; isn’t she _lucky_?—requires her to stay on in the dorms for her full term, but she’s been shuffling between Bellas members as roommates ever since sophomore year (with Amy, which was exactly as ridiculous as she’d expected), so it isn’t so bad. This year, she’s paired herself with Cynthia Rose for a number of reasons. One: since she already spent junior year with Lilly (easily the most terrifying experience of her life), and since Jessica and Denise are practically joined at the hip, the other choice was Stacie. And, though she’s grown to love the girl like a sister, Beca feels no desire whatsoever to hear firsthand how _good_ she is with the boys of Barden.

Two: Cynthia Rose is her co-captain this year (a job that is far more stressful than it looks, which means no one in their right mind wants it; Beca’s not sure how she’s kept this up three years running without an aneurism), so living together makes the most rational sense.

She just _really_ hopes she doesn’t come home to illegal betting rings held between their beds. She’s not sure what the student handbook has to say about that, per se, but it can’t be promising. And her father sort of has this touchy _thing_ about Beca and prison bars.

You would think he’d be over that by now, but it turns out jail stints aren’t something parents ever let you live down. Go figure.

***

The year starts off exactly as she expects it will: with a parade of girls who look and sound like harmonious trainwrecks. She leans against their booth at the Activities Fair and watches the potential newbies dodging and flailing past, grabbing fliers with expressions that range from dubious uncertainty to beaming excitement. One girl actually goes so far as to grab Beca with both hands and _shake_ her, announcing for all of campus to hear that Beca is “the most _excellent_ Bella in the history of Bellas,” and could she _please_ get her headphones autographed?

Fat Amy about kills herself laughing, nearly toppling their table in the process. Cynthia Rose grasps her by the shoulders at the last minute, her smirk never wavering once from the back of Beca’s head.

Beca makes a mental note to give them extra laps during cardio next week.

“I’ll be there!” the girl—Karen—tells Beca when she somewhat reluctantly forks over a creased flier for the upcoming auditions. “I’ll be there with bells on!”

This, Beca thinks as she watches the girl prance away, is what Aubrey and Chloe went through four years ago. _This_ feeling, the sense of needing to preserve a powerful legacy, is what drove them to reach out to the likes of Beca herself.

No wonder Aubrey went a little bit bugfuck before all was said and done.

***

She often thinks about that day, marveling at how different everything was back then. Back when she hated everything about this place—the trees, the frat boys in their lawn chairs, the very idea of standing up on a stage in a stupid scarf, belting Ace of Base like her life depended on it—and would have given anything to get away. She remembers peering across the way at the two girls in their prim little outfits, one blonde, one ginger-haired, looking for all the world like lost children flailing at a struggling lemonade stand.

She remembers the instinct to shake her head, laugh, and walk quickly in the opposite direction, and remembers just as vividly how it felt the first time Chloe caught her eye.

Aubrey didn’t like her back then, not one bit; Aubrey didn’t take two minutes to come to that conclusion. But _Chloe_ —Chloe was on her like Stacie on a fresh nail file, and Chloe never once looked back. It curves Beca’s lips to think about how this girl—this absolutely manic, borderless woman, who makes even single-white-Karen look relatively chill—was so invested in her from the get-go. Chloe shouldn’t have looked at a girl like Beca twice; she knows this from high school, from all the sneers and shoves the cheerleaders loved to dish out to “alt chicks with bad hair.” Chloe should, by all rights, have been no different.

But Chloe, it turned out, was the most different person Beca has ever come across. Chloe changed her life that day, just by giving a shit. Chloe turned everything on its head.

She misses Chloe much of the time—despite them keeping in touch and talking pretty constantly on Skype—but never so much as she does today. Arms crossed over her chest, watching her teammates pass brightly-hued pages across the table to anyone who shows a flicker of interest, she can’t help but smile softly. Chloe _lives_  for this kind of thing. If she could see them now, having grown so far from those two prim girls with their pasted-on smiles, she would just about explode into a gleeful cloud of clear notes and glitter.

She really, really misses Chloe sometimes.

***

Initiation night is relatively entertaining this year—but then, that’s kind of been true every year after the first. Beca has come to realize she far prefers being on this side of the grabbing and dragging process, as opposed to feeling Chloe’s hands as they wrenched her out of a sound sleep and jammed a cloth bag over her head in the dead of night.

(“Sorry,” Chloe had whispered, manhandling her into a jacket and a pair of weathered sneakers. “Aubrey says the shock value adds emotional resonance to your songs later in the year.”)

She and Cynthia vote to send Stacie this year, which turns out to be a mistake (although not _half_ as big a mistake as the year they sent Lilly, whose ninja stealth is somewhat less adorable when she’s sneaking through the windows of hapless freshmen and all but chloroforming them into submission). Stacie’s attention span hasn’t strengthened much since Beca met her, which means she sort of forgets where she’s going halfway through the process, and ends up hauling back not only batshit-crazy Karen and the other two girls they’d voted on, but also a completely random chick, who takes one look around the candlelit space and bursts into tears.

(Beca is bad at dealing with tears—always has been, always will be. She finds herself, for the second time in as many weeks, wishing fervently for Chloe to have _not_ graduated three years ago. Chloe would have known what to do.)

Once the hysterical girl is calmed and sent on her way (with a twenty from Beca’s wallet as a please-don’t-mention-this bribe), everything falls back into place. Karen and her two new friends are beyond stoked, and the atmosphere is catching. Even Beca finds herself swept up in it, dancing around the room with the other girls, allowing Amy to swing her like they’ve tripped and fallen into a hoedown. Lilly pulls Karen over to look at something she’s found in the corner (Beca doesn’t want to know); Stacie takes a long swig of Boone’s Farm and drapes her arms around the tiniest of their inductees—Beca is pretty sure her name is Alexis—to pronounce her “my little buddy.”

(The look on Cynthia Rose’s face is a priceless amalgamation of amusement and envy. Beca chokes down her laughter, unwilling to earn a bruise so early in the year.)

They’re going to be a stronger family than ever, Beca thinks, satisfied with their accomplishments thus far.

The Treblemakers are _never_ getting that trophy back.

***

Jesse finds her at the party later that night, the way he always does, and she wonders how she ever could have dated someone like him. He’s just _such_ a goof, and that makes him wonderful, but ever since their break-up over that first summer apart, she’s unable to see him as anything but a brother. Which makes the beginning of their friendship kind of totally creepish, but whatever; no one calls them on it.

(Except for Amy, who likes to begin every conversation with a painfully casual, “ _Heeey_ , remember that time you two boned?”)

Which they never did, Beca has hurried time and time again to remind her, and thank _god_ for that. Jesse is such a sweetheart, and a magnificent human being in general, but sleeping with him would have been all kinds of awkward. Especially now that they stand on the cusp of their final year as rivals.

He clasps her wrist like they’re forming some kind of old-school treaty, already wavering on his feet from whatever alcohol has been provided this year. “My esteemed enemy!”

She smirks, dutifully squeezing his wrist in return. “Hey, Jesse. Whatcha got for me this year?”

“Oh, big plans,” he tells her, cheerful as ever. “The biggest. We’ve got weapons a-plenty, Mitchell.”

“I’m sure.” She glances over his shoulder. Two of his fellow Trebles have the new girls cornered, doing their best to _play nice_. “Hey, tell Chachi over there to keep it in his pants. Can’t have my newbies soiled this early in the game.”

Jesse follows her eyes, cups a hand around his mouth, and shouts, “ _Jeremy. Down, boy_.”

The kid windmills backward, arms going up in the classic “who, me?” Beca fires him a sardonic salute.

“There,” Jesse says happily. “No cross-aca-pollution on the first night. We’re starting off the year pure and strong.”

“Until Stacie’s done hunting, anyway,” Beca agrees. They’ve long since done away with the _no Treble toning_ law Aubrey was so fond of, mostly for the sake of Stacie’s legendary libido. It would probably send their former captain’s head swiveling in a 360, but Beca figures, _whatever_. The Trebles are, by and large, dicks, but there’s no point in telling grown women who they can and can’t sleep with. They'll figure it out by themselves.

(Besides, telling Stacie _anything_ is a lot like throwing a dried paint swatch at a wall and expecting it to stick. She’s learned to just roll with the punches at this point.)

She loiters around for a while, saying hello to Benji and the few other Trebles she remembers from last year (they’ve undergone a massive shift in players thanks to last year’s bulk graduation; she wonders if these runny-nosed new kids are going to be any competition at _all_ ), then finds a corner of the amphitheater and settles back to breathe. Stuff like this is fun and everything, but everyone else in the group has long paired off, and she sort of feels…

Not _left out_ , exactly. It’s more like how she imagines Buffy felt at the midpoint of season seven, when everyone she loved was acting like she _wasn’t_ their leader. (Not that she watches Buffy. Not that Lilly managed to force her into a marathon run that left her quoting Xander like a pro within the week. Of course not.) There’s just something about being _captain_ —even a co-captain—that makes her feel oddly lonely.

She’s tapping the FaceTime key under Chloe’s name before she realizes it’s past midnight and this is pretty inappropriate, even for them. Before she can navigate away again, however, Chloe’s sleepy face and rumpled red hair are glowing up at her in the darkness.

“Hey,” Chloe rasps, sounding surprisingly aware for someone so recently jerked from dreams. “Aren’t you supposed to be captaining up a storm?”

“This _is_ me captaining,” Beca drawls, tilting the screen so Chloe can see the slapdash, drunken riff-off that’s taken wing a few feet away. Chloe chuckles.

“You’re doing a pretty anti-social job of it then, Cap. What’s up?”

It’s impossible to explain just _why_ she feels this way, but it’s like the tightness in her chest has vanished at the mere sight of Chloe’s smile. Beca sinks back against the stone seat and sighs.

“Just wanted…”

“To see my beautiful face, I know,” Chloe interrupts, flashing a smile that shouldn’t look half that pretty after a few hours of sleep. Beca grins.

“And bask in your modesty, as ever.”

Chloe flicks her hair back, settling more comfortably against her pillows. “That’s what I’m here for, m’dear. Now. Spill. What new blood have your recruited for us this year?”

“Well…” Beca makes a show of tapping a finger against her jawline, her head already going hazy with the rush of adrenaline that always comes from a new year with new girls. It’s that feeling way down in the pit of her gut that tells her they’re going to _kill_ it again, take first place, be the biggest thing a capella has seen in _years_.

She is _so_ goddamn queerballs over this shit, it’s ridiculous. But somehow, the equally excited expression on Chloe’s face leaves her not caring a whole hell of a lot.

“There’s this one girl, Alexis? Can beatbox like you’ve never _heard_.”

***

The first time they rehearse, Beca is certain she’s lost her mind. Whatever she thought she knew about pulling girls from auditions and thrusting them into the group they’ve built from the ground up must have meant nothing at all, because these girls? Are not the Bellas she knows.

(This must be, she thinks, feeling somewhat feverish, how Aubrey and Chloe felt way back when. Replacing their curvy, slim, pretty team with the ragtag batch Beca has grown with must have felt _just_ like this. So they’re going to be okay. They have to be.)

Karen, it turns out, is exactly as apeshit as Beca thought—except, actually, slightly more so. She keeps trailing around after Beca, stepping where Beca stepped (and, more than once, where Beca is still standing, her toes catching on the backs of Beca’s worn Chuck Taylors), nodding when Beca nods. She’s the closest thing to a stalker Beca has had since— _well, since Chloe_ —and she’s finding the whole thing less endearing and more…

“ _Annoying_ ,” Cynthia Rose hisses in her ear. “What is homegirl’s _problem_?”

It feels strange, having to yell at a girl the first week in—which is why Beca grandly steps back and allows Cynthia to take point on the yelling. Which is really more of scolding. Which is _really_ more of Cynthia explaining that girls loving girls is a beautiful, wonderful thing, and should be cherished above all else—but not in the middle of Beca trying to map footwork to match the beat of “Billie Jean.”

Karen goes fluorescent at the implication, and backs off immediately. Beca takes the opportunity to pat herself on the back for delegating half the captainhood to someone as level-headed and brilliant as Cynthia Rose.

The other two—Alexis and Jessica 2, who makes the original Jessica’s jaw grind whenever she’s in the room—are much easier to get along with, but they just feel _different_. It’s the sense Beca gets at the start of every new year, when the girl they lost to graduation is replaced by someone who just _isn’t_. Isn’t the same pitch, or the same speed at keeping choreography, or the same style of human being. It’s a natural enough feeling, she knows, but it makes her head spin every time, because she’s not the kind of person who can shift in and out of relationships like it’s her job. That’s why she loves the Bellas in the first place: they feel steady somehow, like, even though they’re totally insane half the time, she can always depend on Stacie to lust after boys, or Cynthia Rose to lust after Stacie, or Lilly to whip out bizarre non sequiturs at a moment’s notice.

She’s used to losing a background player every year, but this time, having lost _three_ , it just feels _weird_.

(No weirder, she reminds herself, than coping with the holes left by Aubrey and Chloe that first time around. No weirder. They’re going to be just fine.

Although Karen _is_ still looking at her like there’s a closet shrine in the works.)

***

The first competition goes only slightly less well than hoped; Karen trips over the choreography and is only saved from taking out the first row by Cynthia Rose’s arm around her waist, and Alexis forgets a few of the words to Pat Benetar’s “Heartbreaker”, but otherwise, they’re okay. Even if Stacie does flash just a little too much boob in the direction of the judges’ table.

(Beca has grown used to her habitual stripping in public, but still sort of wishes she would rein it in when they’re _onstage_.)

Unfortunately, Jesse’s Trebles are looking pretty strong this year, too. She’d been hoping—and not feeling remotely guilty about it—that his first year without anyone but Benji to fall back on would be rough, but Jesse’s a smart guy. He’s picked dudes who play to the Trebles’ main strengths—a mixture of street-cred-inducing dance moves and speedy vocals—and it’s only by the barest amount that the Bellas scrape by them at judging.

“Okay, guys,” Beca announces afterward, when all the usual screaming and hugging is over with and her team is interested in listening again. “That was good, really good. But Jesse’s guys were _also_ good. Which means—“

“We gotta step this shit _up_ ,” Amy crows, and throws her head back in a howl that has Denise and Karen following suit in seconds. Beca winces, pressing a hand to her ear, and waits for the cacophony to die down again.

“We just need to work a bit harder,” she tells them at last. “But it was great work, really fantastic.”

She knows it’s the truth, but she imagines she can hear Aubrey’s clipped voice in her head all the same: _They’re_ not _that special right now, Beca. They’re not much of anything. You should be whipping them into shape, you know better than this what it takes to be a winner. Don’t make me drag you out of Kuwait!_

It’s weird, that the anxiety is so overwhelming. She’s _done_ this already, led the team to victory three times over—four, if you count her instrumental efforts freshman year—and there is no _reason_ to be this panicked. If they don’t take it, they don’t take it. No reason to get worked up enough to puke over it.

“You’re feeling it,” Chloe tells her knowingly later that night. Beca hugs her knees, leaning into the computer screen and frowning.

“Feeling what? The Aubrey-isms? Spare me.”

Chloe laughs, then hunkers down, looking embarrassed. “Whoops, woke my roommate. Sorry, Jenny!” She adjusts the buds fitted into her ears and pulls her blanket more tightly around her shoulders.

“Why is she sleeping in the living room anyway?” Beca wonders. Chloe shrugs.

“Her room’s got ants. Maintenance around here is kinda slow.”

 _It’s better here_ , Beca thinks with a pang of longing. _Come back. Come back and help me._

She knows better than to say it out loud. Chloe’s the kind of big-hearted soul who actually _would_.

“No, what you’re feeling is the senior spaz attack,” Chloe tells her, voice down to a gentle whisper. “Aubrey wasn’t _always_ that crazy, you know. Driven, totally, and the vomit-fest had a lot to do with it, but I think it was mostly that sense of _this is my last chance._ You know?”

Beca does, and wishes she didn’t. Aubrey’s nice and everything, but she’s kind of the last person on earth—outside of the stepmonster and maybe Mitt Romney—Beca would ever like to be compared to.

“You’ll be fine,” Chloe goes on when Beca just picks at a loose thread on her flannel pants and says nothing. “You’re amazing.” Her eyes gleam, her smile widening. “Just the way you are,” she sings, and adds instantly, “Sorry, Jenny! Sorry!”

The weight on Beca’s chest goes slack under her giggles.

***

Rehearsals are driving her _crazy_. Everyone seems to have lost the will to work hard, buried beneath mountains of homework and exam prep. Stacie is laying flat on her back in the middle of the floor, flicking through Instagram on her phone. Denise and Jessica are playing cat’s cradle in the corner. Lilly has dropped back into her feather-light whisper, and Beca can’t understand a damn word she says.

Only Cynthia Rose seems to have it together, and Beca’s actually a little afraid she’s _too_ together. Army-sergeant together. If she barks, “Attention, aca-bitches!” one more time, Beca is going to have to pull her aside for some breathing exercises.

“Take five!” she says tiredly, after Karen bungles the simple kick-turn for a third time and Fat Amy trips on her own shoelace. “Amy, invest in velcro, maybe?”

“I invented velcro, back in Tasmania,” is the chipper response she receives. Beca sighs.

Chloe is probably at work right now—she can generally remember her schedule better than this, but between three-hour rehearsals and the four upcoming exams darkening her sky, Beca just doesn’t have any headspace left over—but she fires her a text anyway. _Losing it. Can’t keep them in line. Send Christmas cookies?_

Less than a minute later, her phone buzzes.

_How about a Christmas cheesecake? Just found the BEST recipe last night. Need to try it out on someone._

_I’ll take it_ , Beca replies, relieved. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Stacie flop down on Cynthia Rose’s lap, apparently oblivious to the flood of color in Cynthia’s cheeks. She shakes her head.

 _Try carols_ , Chloe suggests. _Tis the season to relax and live a little, Bec. No competition for miles._

She’s got a point; they’re not due to deliver another ass-kicking to the Trebles’ door until March. There’s no reason at all to be working themselves to the bone.

And, she has to admit, crazy Karen’s rendition of “Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town” is actually pretty bangin’. She wonders if they could work it into their next medley.

(It’s the cold, she tells herself immediately after that thought rings through her head, making her just a little bit insane. Just the cold. It’ll all clear up soon.

She only wishes Chloe were here.)

***

The semi-finals are _insane_. It seems as though _everyone_ has managed to lose something—Lilly’s earring, Stacie’s scarf, Jessica’s Red Bull—and Beca is pretty sure she’s lost her patience. Jesse keeps catcalling from the other side of the wings, jumping up and down in place and cracking his neck. Benji is shooting her the shy smile of a guy who very well might have developed an ill-timed crush. Cynthia Rose keeps grabbing her by the shoulders and shouting, “ _We got this!_ ” into her ear.

She’s losing her mind.

And then, just as she’s starting to think maybe she should have gotten a job captaining the Ultimate Frisbee team or something instead, Chloe’s face appears on her phone’s screen. She jabs the green button and pants, “ _Help_ ” into the receiver before her friend can say a word.

“Woah!” Chloe replies. “Hey, calm down.”

“I’m freaking out,” Beca gasps, not calming at all. “Why am I freaking out? I’ve done this a hundred times!”

“Four is not a hundred,” Chloe reminds her in a sane, logical voice. It’s the voice she used to put on whenever Aubrey was going postal over some little misstep, and _oh my god, I’m the new Aubrey._ Beca sucks in a breath, holds it, waits for little black stars to flicker across her field of vision.

“You’re freaking out because you know you’re going to be awesome,” Chloe goes on, smooth and strong on the other end of the line. “That’s why I called. To remind you of how awesome you are.”

“And not because you needed birthday gift ideas for any particularly spastic best friends of yours?” Beca is amazed to hear the steadiness in her own voice. Three feet away, Amy is demanding to know where Lilly hid her phone. Lilly’s expression tells Beca she knows _exactly_ where said phone is, but has no interest at all in sharing. She bites her tongue.

“I think someone’s going to get punched if we don’t get out there soon.”

“It’s not going to be you doing the punching, is it?” Chloe asks mildly. “Because that landed you in county last time.”

“I did my time with grace and finesse,” Beca declares, shocked to hear herself laugh. Chloe’s voice in her ear is bringing her the kind of calm she hasn’t felt in weeks. “We’re going to be fine, aren’t we?”

“Incredible,” Chloe insists, and makes a smacking noise into the phone that takes Beca a second to register as a kiss. “For luck! Not that you need it.”

They don’t. They sweep like they were born for the likes of Lady Gaga and REO Speedwagon, and it doesn’t even bother Beca—much—when Jesse’s gang of vocally-golden morons edges them out for first place. They’re still going to the finals, and they’re still going to absolutely _demolish_ any stupid _boy_ who stands in their way.

All the same, when Jesse throws his arms over his head and beams at her, she flips him the bird and a smirk. It just feels appropriate.

( _Send Aubrey a copy of your first victory at Lincoln_ , she texts Chloe on the bus later, ignoring the jostling shoves from her sisters-in-arms. _I’ll get the tape for you if you don’t have it._

 _I love you!_ is all Chloe sends back. Beca’s heart lurches pleasantly, and she allows Amy’s mad driving to lull her into a doze.)  
***  
When Beca wanders into her room to find Chloe— _here!_ —standing before the full length mirror with her shirt drawn up under her breasts, her first impulse is to flinch away, eyes darting toward the ceiling. “What are you _doing_ here— _woah_.”

April is barreling toward its end; finals at the Lincoln Center are in less than a week, and her world is a hot mess of mixed beats and exams that will decide whether she lives or dies come graduation. Her head is spinning, and to find Chloe—of all people—standing in her bedroom like she’s been invited is just the best icing on a very rickety, awkwardly-decorated cake.

Chloe flips her a smile over her shoulder, and though Beca hasn’t seen her in person in a year, that smile is everything she loved about freshman year. Something about that doesn’t carry over well on a computer screen, but here, in her room, it’s exactly like she remembered.

That _tattoo_ , on the other hand—

Temporarily forgetting Chloe’s state of undress (and the whole, _what is she even_ doing _here?_ thing), Beca makes her way slowly across the carpet for a closer look. The piece sprawls up Chloe’s ribcage, the skin around the ink a little pinker than Beca remembers. Not that Beca has seen this side of Chloe in a very long time, but still—

“When did you get _this_?” she breathes, fingers stretching out to trace. She hesitates before making contact, catching Chloe’s eye in the mirror. “Can…?”

“Duh,” Chloe tells her, jerking the shirt up another inch and leaning into Beca’s curious hand.

It’s beautiful, a work that makes Beca’s every artistic instinct leap for joy. The piece is made up of individual smaller ones, things that don’t seem to go together at all—an Ace of Hearts, a nail file, a pair of DJ headphones, a very small rendition of Australia—detailed into the length of a full-color Bellas scarf. Chloe actually got a _scarf_ —albeit a very pretty one—tattooed into her _skin_.

“You’re crazy,” she tells her, fingers mapping the curves and strokes of the headphones. “You are actually an insane person. Chloe, this is _permanent_.”

“Once a Bella, always a Bella,” Chloe replies flippantly, shrugging. “Besides, I didn’t get it for school spirit.”

Beca narrows her eyes. Chloe smiles back, undeterred.

“We’re a _family_ , Bec. I haven’t been on that stage with you girls for three years, but I still love each and every one of you. You’re my family.”

“You _tattooed_ us on your _body_.” She’s trying to make fun, because this is the kind of batshit crazy thing only Chloe would think to do, but Beca can’t quite find it in her heart to sell the sarcasm. Only Chloe would ever do this, but then, only Chloe could get away with it.

“I thought about it,” Chloe says seriously, her gaze following the tracks of Beca’s fingertips as they dip and swirl around the music notes inlaid among the symbols of her friends. “I’ve been thinking about it, ever since we graduated. I told myself if I still loved you guys—if I still _talked_ to you guys—by the time you were on your way out…”

Beca tears her gaze away from the headphones and the curiously strong urge to ask why they seem slightly larger than the other pieces of Bellahood gracing Chloe’s side. “You used _me_ as a timepiece for this madness?”

Chloe grins. “Of course.”

She’s not going to get a better explanation than that. Beca shakes her head in wonderment, grasping the hem of Chloe’s shirt and pulling it back into place.

“Does Aubrey know?”

Chloe snorts so hard, Beca can’t help but giggle hysterically at the sound.

Chloe is _such_ a damn crazy person.

***

“So why _are_ you here?” she manages to ask a few hours later. It’s the question she hasn’t been able to forget since finding Chloe in front of her mirror, but somehow, between all the conversations that seem to come so much more easily in person than online, it’s gotten lost in the shuffle. Which isn’t surprising, really; Chloe has always been like that, inclined toward grabbing Beca by the hand and hauling her along on some unexpected ride.

See also: her time with the Bellas in general.

Chloe bumps a shoulder against her arm. They’re stretched out on her bed, shoes kicked off onto Cynthia Rose’s side of the room. Chloe’s nails have taken to etching patterns and letters into Beca’s wrist; the action is so soothing, she almost forgets its happening at all.

“You’re about to embark on your last lap of captainhood,” Chloe says easily, like it’s idiotic that Beca even has to ask. “You really think I’d leave you alone for that?”

Beca wants to protest that, _yes_ , she did, because she’s gotten through this with the other girls for support three years running now without Chloe’s help. Then again, she _is_ the one who called, texted, or otherwise flailed for Chloe’s proverbial hand at every turn this year. Maybe Chloe has a point.

“Aubrey is supposed to come, too,” Chloe tells her in a confidential whisper, “but her dad is scheduling her for a ridiculous number of hours at the law firm. She’s probably only going to be able to fly in for the competition itself.”

Beca wonders what that means for Chloe, who is three days early and looks like she’d have no problem staying until the end of the semester.

“And you?” she asks when Chloe’s explanation goes no further, her full attention on the soft skin of Beca’s wrist. Chloe’s eyes flick up, framed in pitch-dark lashes that make Beca’s heart stutter in her chest.

“I’m free and clear ‘til the eleventh of May,” she says. Beca swallows.

“I graduate on the ninth.”

Chloe’s teeth flash, even and white. Beca rolls her eyes with significant effort.

“You’re actually going to hang out until I graduate?”

Chloe reaches down and pulls her shirt up again, baring the tattoo. “Hey, babe, I’ve got you on my side. Least I can do is be on yours.”

It’s so ridiculous, so plainly _insane_ , that all Beca can do is say thank you with as much sincerity as she can muster, tuck her head against Chloe’s shoulder, and take a long, steadying breath.

***

She nearly throws up at Finals. Not _onstage_ , not from anything like what Aubrey went through, but all the same, an hour before they’re supposed to perform, she finds herself on her knees in a bathroom stall. The tile is cold through her jeans, and her skin feels clammy all over, and this is just _not_ the way she usually deals with stress.

A pair of hands comb through her hair before she hears the stall unlatch; Chloe’s chest presses to her back, her chin nested on Beca’s shoulder. She wills herself to breathe.

“You okay?” Chloe asks softly, breath tickling the hairs behind Beca’s ear. She gulps another lungful of air.

“We’re going to win,” Denise’s voice says from outside the stall. Beca glances over her shoulder to find the rest of the girls—the original girls, her awesome nerds—clustered in front of the sinks, looking as badass as she trained them to be. She smiles waveringly.

“I know it.”

“So stop pulling a Posen,” Amy orders with a grin, “and get out here.”

“I resent that,” a voice Beca hasn’t heard in a very long time drawls. Amy’s head snaps around at a speed that just seems unhealthy.

“Shit.”

Aubrey’s heels click against the tile, her dress neatly pressed, her hair tucked back in a hairstyle that, from her place against the toilet, Beca finds distressingly _adult_. She stops at the mouth of the stall and peers down at them—Chloe, wrapped around Beca; Beca, wrapped around porcelain salvation—like she’s going to say something truly horrible.

It’s exactly what Beca _doesn’t_ need right now.

When she sinks to her knees beside them, wrapping a hand around Beca’s shoulder and squeezing, relief floods the room in one giant wave. Beca hears the clatter of Amy falling back against the sinks, followed by the rustle of Lilly’s, “ _Thank God, I thought she was going to stab you._ ” She laughs hoarsely.

“Get it out now,” Aubrey advises. “Trust me, being a YouTube sensation is not always awesome.”

“I’m good,” Beca insists, leaning back into Chloe’s welcoming arms. “I’m good. Sorry.”

“Senior spazzing,” Chloe informs Aubrey briskly. Blonde hair bobs in assent.

“What have you prepared?” Aubrey asks, sounding an awful lot like a professor going over a student’s final project. Beca bites her tongue soundly.

“’Take Me Home Tonight’, ‘Starships’, Demi Lovato, and—“

“’Another One Bites The Dust.’” Cynthia Rose chimes in helpfully. “With a little ‘Careless Whispers’ for old-school kick.”

“It’s _all_ old-school kick,” Aubrey replies, sounding relatively pleased about it. Her eyes remain on Beca, who feels sweaty and extremely overwhelmed. “You think you can pull it off?”

“Know I can,” Beca says, a bit more breathlessly than she’d hoped. Shuffling beside the hand dryer, Karen makes a squeaky noise of agreement.

“Who’s that?” Aubrey demands, eyebrow arched. Stacie thrusts her hand into the air.

“Beca’s Mini-Me.”

Chloe releases a throaty sound that makes Beca think, with some bewilderment, that she has finally found someone her bubbly best friend _doesn’t_ like. The idea is enough to push her back to her feet, smiling dazedly.

“Let’s take this bitch.”

***

A week later, she’s still grinning at the trophy settled once more in its rightful place upon the Bellas’ shelf. It wasn’t supposed to feel this _good_ , winning for a fourth year in a row; it was, if anything, supposed to be mildly humbling, with a dash of boredom on the side. She’s supposed to be over this feeling, on to the next big thing.

But, as it turns out, winning is not a feeling that ever gets old. And there’s something about this one, something so bittersweet that it makes her head hurt a little to think on it too long, that makes it terribly worthwhile.

It feels, for the first time since the departure of Aubrey and Chloe, like an era is ending. Losing others along the way was sad, but _this_ …

“It’s all over,” she tells Chloe numbly. They’re in her dorm again; Chloe is propped on the edge of the mattress they’ve been sharing for two weeks, toeing into a pair of pink heels. She glances up, vibrant hair cascading down one side of her face.

“You’re not _dying_ , Bec.”

She hates to be overdramatic, but: “It feels like it,” she mumbles, looking herself over in the mirror. Her father requested a skirt be donned for this occasion. It makes her feel like a twelve-year-old.

Chloe appears behind her in the mirror, hands going thoughtlessly to Beca’s hips. She’s struck by a memory, a flash of Chloe’s hands gripping her own, easing her through simple choreography. It all felt so stupid back then, with Chloe’s hips against her ass, Chloe’s breath drifting down her neck, like she didn’t belong. She remembers the violent urge to get up and run, to claim the whole thing as one big, musical mistake.

And now the idea of leaving it behind is just…

“You look miserable,” Chloe admonishes, palms squeezing lightly around the curves of Beca’s waist. “Stop that. You’re graduating today, missy.”

“This is it for the Bellas,” Beca tells her, leaning back until Chloe’s breath skirts across the collar of her blouse. “We’re all leaving.”

“Not all,” Chloe tells her, which is true enough; Stacie is pulling a five-year plan, and Cynthia Rose is joining her. But the rest of them are done, scattering to (sometimes literally) the corners of the world. No more Barden. No more Bellas.

No more family.

Chloe bumps against the side of her head, lips pursed. She looks like she’s doing her damnedest not to smile. Beca pouts.

“It’s not funny.”

“Oh, it’s _very_ funny,” Chloe disagrees, pressing a kiss to the side of her head. A tingle zips down Beca’s spine. “Because you, my Barden-hating, angry DJing, no-friends-are-worth-my-time dear, never thought you would be here. Did you?”

It’s the honest truth. Beca has to admit, from beneath her indignant little scowl, that Chloe has a very good point. Wasn’t this exactly what she was thinking about back in August, pulling up to Barden’s curb in that big yellow taxi for the last time?

“The Bellas broke me,” she mumbles. Then, louder, and considerably more pointedly: “ _You_ broke me.”

“Darling,” Chloe teases, kissing her cheek this time, “it was my only goal in life.”

***

She crosses the stage on legs that feel much better suited to an infant giraffe, and when the diploma—or, really, the rolled-up bit of blank paper masquerading as the diploma she will see in six-to-eight weeks; what a let down—touches her hand, it’s Chloe’s blue eyes she searches out in the audience. Chloe blows her a kiss and opens her mouth in what Beca trusts is the highest note she is allowed to reach, and Beca forgets her sorrow long enough to grin.

She creeps her way back to the folding chair with her program resting on it, placed reverently between Amy’s stretched-out legs and Lilly’s sly smile. They look so grown-up in their emerald gowns and jauntily-perched caps that Beca has to laugh, because this just _isn’t_ them. She knows Amy is wearing a thickly-molded necklace beneath the gown, bearing the word _Bitch_ in huge letters, and that Lilly has been habitually flicking a Zippo against the side of her chair since the ceremony began, and it just feels so damn _hilarious_ , that they’re considered adults now. Officially.

Fucking ludicrous, is what it is.

She reaches up and fingers the piercings in her left ear, amused when her father gives a blatant wince in the crowd. She’s done a lot for that man over the last four years, trying to satisfy some bullshit expectation, and she expected to hate herself for it, but—in truth? This really hasn’t been so bad. Not bad at all.

She suspects it’s the real world that’s going to hurt after this. The real world doesn’t have room for a capella, foul-mouthed Australians, or the gleam of triumph than rings through a person when they’ve just bitch-slapped Jesse and the Trebles down another rung on the musical staircase. The real world doesn’t have the Bellas.

The real world, she thinks with a sharp stab, doesn’t have _Chloe_.

“I want to rewind,” she says when the show is over and she’s standing outside with Chloe. They’re leaning against a tree, the one the Bellas’ booth is stationed beside every year. It feels fitting and miserable all at once.

“I want to go back,” she says, scuffing the toe of one sneaker—her father doesn’t get everything he wants today, no sirree—against the grass. Chloe loops an arm around her waist and holds tight.

“I know.” Her head presses to the side of Beca’s, her lips brushing skin. “I’ve been there.”

Beca wonders how she didn’t notice back then, Chloe feeling the way she does now. The Bellas were everything to Chloe, enough of a life-altering event to inspire a bold bit of art etched into her skin; she must have felt at least this awful at graduation. More so, probably, with Aubrey heading to the opposite side of the country.

How could she have missed that?

“It gets better,” Chloe goes on, nuzzling against her cheek. Beca can feel the stretch of her smile, gentle and utterly without mockery. She closes her eyes.

“High school wasn’t like this.”

“You didn’t let anyone _in_ ,” Chloe points out, and though Beca has never told her that in so many words, she isn’t surprised that Chloe knows. It’s a pretty straightforward assumption, all things considered.

“I could stay,” she says thoughtfully, knowing as the words tumble forth that she would never be able to do it. Chloe doesn’t have to spew rationale this time around; she knows, without having to live it, that it wouldn’t be the same. You can’t cling to a chapter that’s reached its end. There’s just no way.

“L.A. needs you,” Chloe informs her with the confident air of someone who believes without thinking about it. Chloe, Beca thinks with a stab of muted delight, believes in her dream even more than Beca does sometimes. Chloe trusts in it with everything she’s got.

For god’s sake, Chloe is _here_. Chloe drove here just to hop on the bus to the Lincoln Center, Chloe has been sleeping in her bed for two weeks, Chloe snagged a ticket to her friggin’ graduation ceremony—and for what? Because it was for Beca. Because, when it comes to Chloe, that’s as simple as it gets.

They’re family. That’s that. And family doesn’t end with a diploma and one last hurrah at the national level.

That tattoo is making more and more sense every day.

Suddenly, she’s got her arms around Chloe, clutching tight at the middle of her back like a drowning child. Chloe murmurs something into her ear that probably qualifies as a reassurance, but Beca isn’t listening. All she hears is the hum of four years gone by way too fast, echoing on a loop through her head.

“You were amazing here,” Chloe is telling her when she finally manages to tune back in. “You’re going to be amazing in California, too.”

Beca is kissing her before she can stop herself. She half-expects Chloe to shove her away, to tell her that this self-pity thing only stretches so far before smacking into a wall of _get it together, girl_ , but the shove doesn’t come. Chloe makes a sound of utter surprise against her mouth, her hands snagging in the loose wrinkles of Beca’s graduation gown.

“Check this shit out,” Amy’s voice calls from behind them. “Lesbians on parade. Didn’t Cynthia Rose corner the market on that one, like, half a decade ago?”

Lilly mumbles something Beca wouldn’t have been able to make out, even if her ears weren’t busy ringing with the whisper of Chloe’s lips on her own. She draws a deep breath and pivots to face them, weighing the opening syllables of a sarcastic retort on her tongue.

Chloe is already laughing; Amy looks almost bored, like she’s been expecting this for years. Standing just behind her with one arm propped against her shoulder, Cynthia Rose cocks an eyebrow.

“All these months, I’ve been living with a Sapphic sister,” she sighs. “We could’ve gone _bar-hopping_ , Mitchell.”

“Yeah, _Mitchell_ ,” Chloe teases. Beca pushes at her shoulder.

“What gives, _Mitchell_?” Stacie chimes in, looking pretty damn proud of herself for no reason Beca can fully comprehend. She rolls her eyes.

“Hey, you jerks, a little respect. I’m still your captain for another—“ She does some quick math. “Eighteen hours.” And then the torch will pass. The second she steps off campus, climbing back into some big yellow taxi for the last time, Cynthia Rose will be the Bellas’ one and only fearless leader. And _then_ it will be over.

But until then…

“Aye aye, cap’n,” Amy shouts, snapping off the shoddiest salute Beca has ever seen. On her signal, they sprint for her, arms outstretched; she folds her shoulders up around her ears, shrieking as they bodyslam her in one giant tangle of limbs and hair and half-giggled high notes.

Damn right, she thinks with her head half-buried in Stacie’s boobs, one arm trapped between Cynthia Rose and Lilly, the other wound possessively around Chloe’s waist. Damn right, the Bellas broke her. She doesn’t even _recognize_ herself, this girl in a green gown, roaring with laughter. This isn’t the girl who stepped out of that first cab. This isn’t the girl who sneered at a capella, or who slunk around with her head down, or who shrunk away from an overzealous redhead in a communal shower stall. She hasn’t seen that girl in years.

The Bellas broke her, through and through, and the person who is left over is not some wannabe-hardass with a perpetual smirk and chip on her shoulder the size of Colorado. The person left over is full of unapologetic love for what makes her happy, and for her friends, and for the way Chloe’s hand feels when it swings up to clasp hers. If this is broken, she thinks, she can’t imagine wanting to be anything else.

Broken is the happiest she has ever been.

And family—the kind you build from the ground up, with cardio and choreography and the lyrics to idiotic teen pop songs ricocheting through your brain—doesn’t end when college does.

If anyone is proof of that, Beca is pretty sure it’s the blue-eyed beauty chanting, “ _Pick her up, pick her up_ ” at her side.

And, oh Christ, that’s exactly what they’re doing: picking her up and carrying her like she’s just scored the winning run in some Little League baseball game, oh _Christ_. They are the dorkiest human beings she has ever known in her life. And she loves every last one of them. They keep her sane. They keep her  _happy_.

(Even psycho Karen, who still gazes at her like she holds the secrets to the universe.

Chloe doesn’t seem to like that much.)

Though she has never felt sadder, or more a part of something so bittersweet, Beca thinks it is, on the whole, pretty freakin’ awesome. It  _is_ a lifetime achievement, like it or not--and, against all odds, she likes it more than she's liked anything in her whole damn life.

(She is  _never_  spilling a word of this to her father.)  
  



End file.
